Network RAID 5 and 6
Network RAID, a key feature of all P4000 SANs, has been enhanced to add two new network RAID levels. Both Network RAID 5 and 6 provide better capacity utilisation while still providing high availability and redundancy beyond simple disk RAID. With the addition new network RAID levels, all protection levels have been renamed to describe their data layout as it relates to disk RAID levels. All Network RAID levels continue to be set on a per volume basis and can be easily changed without interrupting data access.
| Data Protection Level | Previous Name | Data layout across all nodes in a cluster |
| Network RAID-0 | None | Stripe |
| Network RAID-5 | NA | Stripe and single parity protection |
| Network RAID-6 | NA | Stripe and dual parity protection |
| Network RAID-10 | 2-Way | Stripe and mirrored protection |
| Network RAID-10+1 | 3-Way | Stripe and triple mirrored protection |
| Network RAID-10+2 | 4-Way | Stripe and quadruple mirrored protection |
Here's the Network RAID selections in the CMC:
Application Integration
Application managed snapshots are integrated directly into the centralised management console and support all SAN/iQ features, including snapshot and remote copy schedules. Requesting VSS integrated snapshots, manually or scheduled, is a simple option available in the CMC. Snapshot sets are also now managed through the CMC with easy options for recovery or deletion of sets containing multiple volumes.
Again, here's what the screen looks like:
Best Practices Analyser
The centralised management console now includes a best practices summary which automatically identifies important best practices that are not currently being followed. For each management group, it identifies specific configurations and advises on best practices that should be implemented. Following the guidelines the best practices analyser suggests can increase the performance and reliability of the SAN.
Here's a screen-shot of that:
HP Systems Insight Manager (SIM) monitoring
SAN/iQ 8.5 enables HP P4000 SANs to support HP SIM discovery and status monitoring. HP SIM support for P4000 SNMP traps requires a future update to HP SIM. This also enables a new release of HP Remote Support Tools coming in 2010 to integrate with all HP P4000 SANs running SAN/iQ 8.5 or higher.